World News

An Islamic State group spokesman has urged sympathizers in Europe and the U.S. to launch attacks on civilians there if they are unable to travel to the group’s self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq.

NATO foreign ministers were on Thursday finalizing the alliance’s biggest military build-up since the end of the Cold War to counter what they see as a more aggressive and unpredictable Russia.

China’s attempts to claim a nearly 1.4-million-square-mile swathe of open ocean are without precedent and probably without legal merit, but Beijing continues to assert its right to the economically critical zone — and increasingly puts its claims in military terms.

A handful of scientists around the United States are trying to do something that some people find disturbing: make embryos that are part human, part animal.

Threats emanating from the Middle East, including those caused by ISIS and the Syrian civil war, cannot be contained and therefore require the United States to significantly ramp up its military commitments in the region, according to a new report.

Russia has described a new $800 million U.S. missile defense site in Romania as a “direct threat” and warned it would bolster its equivalent systems earlier than planned.

The United States will switch on a $800 million missile shield in Romania on Thursday, part of an umbrella from Greenland to the Azores against Iranian rockets that Russia aims to knock out its nuclear weapons.

Senior Pentagon leaders and their Russian counterparts on Wednesday fine tuned plans to ensure warplanes from both countries operating in the skies above Syria stay out of each other’s way.

Iran’s army is now fully equipped with a Russian air defense system after a long and controversial delivery process, Defense Minister General Hossein Dehghan was quoted as saying Tuesday.

The U.S. Navy sent its third warship in less than seven months into waters of the South China Sea claimed by China as tensions rise ahead of an international court’s ruling on the territorial dispute.

A partial ceasefire in the Syrian province of Aleppa was reached Wednesday by the United States and Russia, in hopes it will reduce violence that has flared up after a two-month lull.

Russia will reinforce its western and southern flanks with three new divisions by the year-end, officials said on Wednesday, threatening retaliation to NATO’s plans to boost its military presence in eastern members Poland and the Baltic States.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter used a U.S. military changing-of-the-guard ceremony Tuesday to blast Russian aggression in Europe, saying Moscow is “going backward in time” with warlike actions that compel a U.S. military buildup on NATO’s eastern flank.

Germany is pushing for a European army in the 28-member EU bloc, according to a white paper put forward by the German government. The army is envisaged to have a joint headquarters and shared military plans.

Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that he and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov hope to meet by Thursday to find a way to boost the deteriorating ceasefire in Syria.

The Islamic State’s affiliate in Egypt is staging increasingly sophisticated and daring attacks, officials and analysts say, prompting Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian militant group Hamas to form an unlikely alliance against the terrorist group.

Iran is offering to help the global community construct nuclear power plants, according to a top official, who said that Iran would be home to seven new nuclear plants by 2020, according to recent remarks.

Iran has begun to ask its teenage boys to volunteer to fight in Syria in a sign the hard-line Islamic regime’s military is suffering rising casualties in the five-year war and needs a morale boost, an opposition group says.

The U.S. Air Force on Monday flew in two F-22 Raptor fighter jets to Romania as a show of strength to deter Russian intervention in Ukraine.

Human life begins in bright flash of light as a sperm meets an egg, scientists have shown for the first time, after capturing the astonishing ‘fireworks’ on film.